BigRead13 Day 42 : Colour

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

In today’s excerpt from The Silver Chair, Aslan arrives. He is so bright and real and strong, all else pales. We’re asked “are we just living in the shadowlands?”

Part of me says yes, we are. At first we see through a glass darkly, and then we see face to face… There are shadows which cloud God from us and which we hope to see pass when we get to Heaven.

We look at God in black and white – with occasional glimpses of colour that hint at what there might be to see in future. And I always worry that others may be seeing more of him than me, and that that means they are somehow closer to him than me. I’m not wading into this weekend’s debate that raged on the Guardian website and in the twittersphere about the respective merits of the evangelical and anglo-catholic view of Jesus and the Cross. I will, however, confess if I may, to a teensy little bit of jealousy when I hear some of my more evangelical friends sound like they are having a far closer relationship with God than I am – that perhaps they are seeing, if not in Glorious Technicolor™, then in sepia or faded tones rather than the washed out grey I do. But then I pray that God won’t mind, and that he’s just glad I’m trying to see him at all, and doing my best, and perhaps will let me see more as I deepen my relationship with him.

The one thing I do think I get to do is to hear a little of God in richness and colour through music. I know that none of you will sit back and listen to this for an hour, but I’m going to listen to it tomorrow, and it is just a little audible glimpse of God’s wonder. The music starts at 02:21 in: